Supporting the Mental Wellness of Physicians (with Dr. Caroline Elton)

The Doctor's Art

Henry Bair and Tyler Johnson

Medicine, Society & Culture, Health & Fitness, Philosophy

5 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 21 March 2023

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For all the deeply rewarding moments medicine offers, it is also a profession often intensely challenging on both systemic and personal levels. Our guest in this episode is Dr. Caroline Elton, an occupational psychologist who has devoted her career to counseling doctors and medical trainees in the National Health Service and various medical schools in the UK. She is the author of Also Human: The Inner Lives of Doctors, which discusses the physical, mental, and emotional toll of medical training and practice. Among other issues, she writes about how doctors deal with guilt and shame, gender and racial discrimination in health care training, the erosion of the clinician-patient relationship in modern medicine, and how clinicians can build emotional resilience. Over the course of our conversation, Dr. Elton shares what led her to this work, exposes the many shortcomings in how doctors are trained today, and explores how we can create a more humane path forward.

In this episode, you will hear about:

What led Dr. Elton to her unique work in counseling physicians - 2:04
Reflections on both the compassion and the callousness Dr. Elton witnessed as she observed physicians (her patients) in their working environments - 10:01
A review of medical training in the UK versus the US - 15:16
A discussion of Also Human: The Inner Lives of Doctors and the concept of moral injury - 19:51
The kinds of patients Dr. Elton sees in her present work - 25:00
How institutional cultures can come to valorize toxic, brutal expectations placed on physicians - 27:03
How Dr. Elton’s managed her first patient, a doctor who was planning on quitting medicine just weeks after beginning her postgraduate training - 32:49
A discussion of how sexism and other forms of bigotry factors into burnout - 38:20
Why the screening process for selecting future doctors should be improved - 43:37
How a trainee can prepare themselves for the psychological demands of a medical career - 48:00
Advice to administrators and executives of how best to serve the psychological demands of their medical workforce - 50:34

Dr. Caroline Elton is the author of Also Human: The Inner Lives of Doctors.

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to [email protected].

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi, I'm Henry Bear.
0:03.4	And I'm Tyler Johnson.
0:04.8	And you're listening to the Doctors' Art, a podcast that explores meaning in medicine.
0:09.9	Throughout our medical training and career, we have pondered, what makes medicine meaningful?
0:15.2	Can a stronger understanding of this meaning create better doctors?
0:18.8	How can we build healthcare institutions that nurture the doctor-patient connection?
0:23.1	What can we learn about the human condition from accompanying our patients in times of suffering?
0:28.0	In seeking answers to these questions, we meet with deep thinkers working across healthcare,
0:33.0	from doctors and nurses to patients and healthcare executives, those who have collected a career's worth of harder and wisdom.
0:40.2	Proving the moral heart that beats at the core of medicine, we will hear stories that are by turns heartbreaking,
0:45.6	amusing, inspiring, challenging, and enlightening.
0:49.3	We welcome anyone curious about why doctors do what they do.
0:52.8	Join us as we think out loud about what illness and healing can teach us about some of life's biggest questions.
1:02.9	For all the deeply rewarding moments medicine offers, it is also a career that is often intensely challenging,
1:09.6	on both systemic and personal levels.
1:12.5	Our guest in this episode is Caroline Elton, an occupational psychologist who has devoted her career
1:18.0	to counseling doctors and medical trainees in the National Health Service and various medical schools in the UK.
1:24.9	She is the author of also human, the inner lives of doctors, which discusses the physical, mental, and emotional toll of medical training and practice.
1:35.2	Among other issues, she writes about how doctors deal with guilt and shame, gender, and racial discrimination in healthcare training,
1:43.4	and how doctors can build emotional resilience.
1:46.5	Over the course of our conversation, Elton shares what led her to this work,
1:50.9	exposes the many shortcomings in how doctors are trained today, and explores how we can create a more humane path forward.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Henry Bair and Tyler Johnson, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Henry Bair and Tyler Johnson and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.